RAMBLIN' JACK ELLIOTT is a tough old sod with a million stories and no pretention. Up in Leeds, fresh from All Tomorrow's Parties he reflects on the experience. "There were three or four real musicians there, and about 40 other people who got up on stage … I think the folk there are very tolerant to noise, you know … or they have no ears at all." He pauses carefully, smiles and tells us he enjoyed himself. You could see a new story just starting to take shape from a fresh lump of clay. Twenty years down the line, when he will still only be 95, Ramblin' Jack will have worked this up into the epic proportions of the tale about Caesar the Dog and KRIS KRISTOFFERSON. The story in which the dog, not Kristofferson, has the lead part.
The songs that Elliott performs have that vital long-distilled quality to them. The heroes have names, but they are ordinary working people. Their deeds are compressed into the terse language of folk song and preserved for as long as we are prepared to keep them. They turn out fresh and vibrant every time a real singer puts them to music. John Henry the railway worker, the engineer on the pig iron train setting off down Rock Island Line, the migrant worker in 1930s California, short of the Doh Re Me: Elliott brings them to life and measures them up against his own broad, long life and finds them more than worth singing about. However many times you've heard these stories, when Jack sings them they are new all over again.
He opens with the JESSE FULLER'S "San Francisco Bay Blues" and closes on BOB DYLAN's 'Don't Think Twice, It's Alright'. He sings with a forceful and commanding voice, poor lungs notwithstanding, and plays a delicately picked guitar that shifts from the big chugging blues of LEADBELLY to the dancing ragtime of the Jesse "Lone Cat" Fuller tune. For me the musical highlight is "The South Coast", written by LILLIAN BOS ROSS. It’s a melodramatic tale of the isolated Big Sur region in turn of the century California. Elliott catches the lonely desperation, the physical beauty and the Spanish passion as only a big story teller can.
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A living chapter of real history is worth a library of learned tomes. RAMBLIN' JACK ELLIOTT in person knocks any sepia fringed idealisation into embarrassed silence. It goes without saying that the audience don’t move a muscle. His legend has them quiet from the start, but sheer force of character and a very long life of stage experience give him as long as wants of our complete attention.
MARK WRIGHT, a mere lad in Jack's tour manager role, opened the evening with some good material of his own and daughter Aiyana shepherded the big guy into something approaching good behaviour – bullying him into singing "Iron Nails" and holding up the lyrics that he claimed not to be able to remember. It was a special evening, and all credit to promoter John Keenan for making it happen.
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